The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MATT) is join­ing the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty in ob­serv­ing World Press Free­dom Day 2026, mark­ing the 35th an­niver­sary of the Wind­hoek De­c­la­ra­tion.

The as­so­ci­a­tion ex­pressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with jour­nal­ists and me­dia work­ers across the coun­try, de­scrib­ing them as part of the Fourth Es­tate and front­line guardians of trans­paren­cy and truth in T&T.

This year’s theme, “Shap­ing a Fu­ture at Peace: Pro­mot­ing Press Free­dom for Hu­man Rights, De­vel­op­ment, and Se­cu­ri­ty,” comes against what MATT de­scribed as a sober­ing back­drop fol­low­ing a de­cline in the coun­try’s stand­ing in the 2026 World Press Free­dom In­dex pub­lished by Re­porters With­out Bor­ders (RSF).

T&T slipped 13 places to rank 32nd out of 180 coun­tries, with its score falling from 79.1 in 2025 to 74.70.

The RSF re­port points to sev­er­al struc­tur­al pres­sures af­fect­ing the lo­cal me­dia en­vi­ron­ment, in­clud­ing the in­flu­ence of po­lit­i­cal ad­ver­tis­ing on ed­i­to­r­i­al in­de­pen­dence, the ab­sence of an ef­fec­tive wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme con­tribut­ing to self-cen­sor­ship in a high-crime con­text, and the dis­pro­por­tion­ate tar­get­ing of fe­male me­dia work­ers.

MATT al­so raised con­cern over grow­ing chal­lenges in the dig­i­tal space, warn­ing that mis­in­for­ma­tion and AI-dri­ven dis­tor­tions are in­creas­ing­ly shap­ing pub­lic dis­course. The as­so­ci­a­tion said jour­nal­ists are fac­ing fre­quent at­tacks from po­lit­i­cal op­er­a­tives, in­clud­ing the record­ing of re­porters while on as­sign­ment and the cir­cu­la­tion of edit­ed clips on so­cial me­dia plat­forms in­tend­ed to dis­cred­it their work.

It said these ac­tions, of­ten tak­en out of con­text, are de­signed to un­der­mine both in­di­vid­ual jour­nal­ists and the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the wider me­dia fra­ter­ni­ty.

MATT wel­comed a re­cent Court of Ap­peal rul­ing in Civ­il Ap­peal No. P030 of 2021 in­volv­ing the Trinidad Ex­press News­pa­pers, where search war­rants ex­e­cut­ed at the me­dia house were ruled un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing RSF’s as­sess­ment that jour­nal­ists in T&T re­main rel­a­tive­ly safe, with no record­ed killings or de­ten­tions, MATT not­ed that in­tim­i­da­tion and pres­sure per­sist. It al­so point­ed out that de­spite three states of emer­gency in re­cent years, press free­dom has not been struc­tural­ly cur­tailed.

The as­so­ci­a­tion reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to de­fend­ing me­dia in­de­pen­dence, ad­vo­cat­ing for fair wages, eth­i­cal stan­dards, and pro­tec­tion for those work­ing on the ground in news­rooms and in the field.

“A free press is the heart­beat of a free peo­ple. To­day, we cel­e­brate that pulse and vow to pro­tect it against all forms of cen­sor­ship, ma­nip­u­la­tion, and fear.”